Supporting Israel’s “start-up nation”

Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog

In March, we launched Campus London to help support the vibrant start-up community there and help energize the U.K. Internet economy. Today, we’re launching Campus Tel Aviv—a one-floor event & community space and pre-accelerator program in downtown Tel Aviv, made available to early stage start-ups and developers.

With the Internet economy contributing 6.4 percent of Israel’s GDP and with the world’s second largest center of tech start-ups after Silicon Valley, it’s no wonder that Israel is commonly referred to as “start-up nation.” For some time now, we’ve been supporting Internet and mobile entrepreneurs in Israel with tech talks, events and hackathons. We hope that Campus Tel Aviv will enable us to do more to support local innovation.

The Campus space will be used by start-ups and partners for events, a “device lab” will give developers the chance to try out projects on a range of devices, and entrepreneurs will get access to Google’s teams and other experts. We’re also working with tech incubators, accelerator programs and other partners to bring their start-ups to Campus for a pre-accelerator initiative called “Launch Pad.” It’s a two-week “bootcamp” for more than 100 start-ups each year, aimed at enhancing existing accelerator programs by providing expertise in user experience and design, product strategy, global marketing, business development and more.

At the launch of Campus Tel Aviv—from left to right, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister), Meir Brand (Managing Director, Google Israel, Greece, South & Sub-Saharan Africa), Yossi Matias (Head of Israel R&D Center).

In 1998, when Larry and Sergey founded Google, we were a start-up in a garage. In many ways, we remain a start-up at heart, and we’re committed to helping new entrepreneurs and developers around the world succeed. We hope that Campus Tel Aviv will contribute to future Israeli tech innovation and, in doing so, make the web and the mobile space better. You can find out more about Campus Tel Aviv on our website.

Posted by Amir Shevat, Developer Relations Manager & Eyal Miller, New Business Development - Co-leads, Campus Tel Aviv